Let me quote from Armagednoutahere:

“There is so much irrationality in the arguments of those who try to foist their own sexual morality on the whole world that it's worthy of a more thorough analysis.”

People who enact laws shouldn’t assume that everyone has to believe and live under their morals. Morality is viewed very differently around the world and in America. Rather than base laws on morality, we should base them on their effectiveness and fairness.

When prohibiting prostitution, drugs, abortion, low level crime through law, we should consider whether they help or hurt society. Many people have made a very clear case on Glenn’s threads, that too many of our laws and the interpretation of those laws have damaged far too many lives. My message to all the moralist law makers is: save your morals for your bedroom and stay out of mine; save your religion for your life and stop letting it ruin other lives that don’t believe as you do.

All this discussion is about bad laws, not whether they should be followed or not. And your argument about economics and sex has been fully addressed over the last two days alone, and anything I would say would probably make no difference in changing your opinion.

Aycharaych et al.

Last week Catherine Austin Fitts gave a timely interview on the Drug Truth Network.

I bet you that if I could sit down with a consolidated picture of all the 401(k)s and IRAs of all the people currently listening to this show I could prove to them, if they also gave me a list of the five things they most hated that our government and large corporations were doing, I could prove to them in a very relatively quick manner that they were financing it. Most 401(k)s, IRAs, retirement plans are financing the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

http://www.drugtruth.net

You nailed it, man.

Last night (Tuesday), CBS news had a piece about the Spitzer bombshell which included some onscreen moralizing from Sally Quinn. She didn't stop to do any moralizing over her onw career-boosting tryst with Ben Bradlee, though, and CBS, of course, declined to bring up that particular topic.

However, it has nothing to do with your absurd "interpretation". Perhaps you don't understand the difference between criminalization and decriminalization. Perhaps you think it is like flammable and inflammable. I assure you, it is not.

Explain it to me then..

But you will have to type very s l o w l y since I am exceedingly dense.

Boy, those New York Republicans were sure quick to call for the impeachment of Spitzer -- it’s so nice to see them regain their “moral outrage” voice once again after completely ignoring and then even applauding David Vitter for repeatedly hiring prostitutes.

Thank goodness Spitzer is a Democrat and not a Republican, it’s been a while since they were able to puff themselves up with moral indignation.. Ah, good times, just like the Clinton years.

Back then, Vitter himself was just full of moral outrage over anyone who didn’t want to impeach Clinton – which he saw as imperative.

If no “meaningful action” were taken against Clinton, he wrote, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture."

Yes, thank goodness we have Vitter still in office to protect us from any further drain on our values.

Lesson learned: if you’ve got a penchant for prostitutes, make sure you’re a member of the “moral values” party.

Is it any wonder that “sex workers” say they always do better business at Republican conventions? All that “moral outrage” needs a release every now and then.

Climb down off the cross - we need the wood. How do you explain so many female concubine fantasies if they find "prostitution" so loathsome? Methinks you protest waaaay too much.

If you can't see that, and apparently you can't, you are blind. But then, you are not a woman -- you're a man, and its inherent in you to defend the power group you belong to.

From Jane Hamsher, today:

http://firedoglake.com/2008/03/11/eliots-mess/

And for the record, as someone who thinks prostitution should be legal -- and that most laws restricting it are written to make the lives of prostitutes worse, not better -- I don't plan to be calling for Spitzer's resignation any time soon.

Since I only hold that view because I'm a man, how come she holds the same view?

And seriously - don't you see the irony of accusing me of having insufficient respect for women when I'm the one who thinks their choices should be respected and you're the one who insists that they don't know what's good for them, that they're just confused about their own lives, and that they should be turned into criminals because they make choices that you don't like? You talk about other women like they're 5 years old.

When female prostitutes say that they choose what they do, that they are happy with it, that it empowers them, that they are free to leave at any time but don't, what's your response to that? That they're just blind and brainwashed and you know better than they do about the reality of their life?

That isn't having respect for women. It's the opposite.

Most 401(k)s, IRAs, retirement plans are financing the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Quelle surprise!

By announcing up front that I'm saying and doing whatever the hell I want, and a lot of it is going to conflict.

Quick quiz;

Under which clause of the Constitution is it a federal crime if a certain weed happens to be growing on my property?

Can you answer it without looking it up?

You have fallen hook, line, and sinker for the false equivocation fallacies and false analogy tactics that people have been posting over the last two days. I wouldn't pass you in the freshman argument class that I used to teach in college.

Please, read the columns of Bob Herbert, a journalist who has walked into the heart of prostitution--even legal prostitution, and written eloquently about it. He has also written about the legalization issue.

Really Glenn, you have been exhibiting a sort of childish spitefulness about this topic over the past few days that is very surprising. Is your ego so overbearing that you cannot bear to admit that you were wrong about something?

And you are wrong about prostitution--it demeans all women who are involved in it, even "high class" call girls--whatever that means. Until you have had sex with a man you find offensive or vile, but you must go on, you cannot appreciate this fact. You just can't.

And your scolding, lecturing tone is a disappointment, too. What a shame.

Prostitution cannot be compared to other things; it is not like anything else. Please address the issues that were raised in the thread suggesting that legalization has not worked in those places it has been enacted. And please learn to differentiate between decriminalization and legalization.